Juanes at Barnes & Noble

However you measure fame, Juanes, the forty-year-old Colombian pop star, seems to have an unhealthy amount of it. He has nineteen Latin Grammys, seven and a half million Twitter followers, and a six-foot-five bronze statue of his likeness stands in the main square of his home town, near Medellín. Juanes’s trademark, besides his music, which combines the rhythms of cumbia with classic-rock guitar, is his decency. He runs a foundation, Mi Sangre, which works to eradicate land mines in Colombia, and he has helped raise money for disabled children and local peace efforts. He has Bono’s earnestness, Johnny Depp’s greasy handsomeness, and an almost feline delicacy—his voice is so low and gentle, that it’s hard to believe that he was once part of the heavy-metal group Ekhymosis.

Recently, Juanes performed a short set at the Barnes & Noble at Union Square and discussed his new memoir, “Chasing the Sun.” A small stage was set up on the third floor of the bookstore, near the “Law” and “True Crime” aisles. In photographs, Juanes is usually wearing leather, and he didn’t disappoint, dressed in a form-fitting jacket and black jeans. An ecstatic crowd of around three hundred people, all of whom had purchased a copy of the book, shrieked like they had been dowsed in ice water whenever Juanes completed a sentence; they jumped to their feet during the question-and-answer portion of the event, hoping that Raymond Garcia, the book’s publisher, would call on them. A young man sitting in the row behind me had come up from Atlanta, by bus, to give Juanes a copy of his CD. In the back, two women waved a Colombian flag over their heads.

“I want to thank God, my husband, Penguin, and Barnes & Noble for this,” one woman said, in Spanish, before asking Juanes about how God had helped him in his career. In “Chasing the Sun” and in his music, Juanes writes a lot about God—in the vaguest possible sense of the word. “When I talk about God, I’m not necessarily talking about religion. To me, God is the energy and light that each of us carries,” he writes near the end of his book. “Everything we see, everything that exists, is part of God.” When I interviewed Juanes, he described himself as a kind of cultural Catholic. “I have great respect for Catholic traditions, my family is Catholic, and it’s part of my life,” he told me.

“Chasing the Sun” is Juanes’s first appeal to English-language audiences. With the exception of one refrain—“It is time to change”—in the chorus of “Odio por Amor,” his songs are all in Spanish. Juanes speaks English—he lives in Miami—but avoids doing so in public. (At the event, Garcia asked questions in English and Juanes responded in Spanish.) Juanes has framed his commitment to Spanish as a political choice, one that fits with his brand of good citizenship. “With respect to Shakira, Ricky, and Enrique,”—referring to Spanish-language singers who record in English—“this is my path,” Juanes said at Barnes & Noble. He’s made similar statements many times before.

Juanes’s decision, until now, to stick with Spanish-speaking audiences may be as pragmatic as it is political. With the exception of his energetic single “La Camisa Negra” (“The Black Shirt”), released in 2005, Juanes doesn’t churn out the kind of universal dance hits associated with Shakira or Ricky Martin. His style is more regional. In 2012, Juanes recorded an unplugged session with MTV, performing his songs acoustically, in arrangements that included a brass orchestra and emphasized his Latin roots. The frequent, passing mentions of God in his lyrics are reflective of Colombia—it’s impossible to live there and not become, to an extent, a cultural Catholic. (When I lived in Bogotá, “Do you believe in God?” was a question cabbies would ask when we got stuck in traffic.) But Juanes’s lyrics, which include many earnest praises of God, might make his music hard to market in the U.S. Some of his songs are a bit too pious for secular audiences—one of his most catchy tracks is “A Dios Le Pido” or “I Ask God”—and yet his religious references are not quite literal enough for the Christian-rock crowd.

Juanes was amiably straightforward about his memoir, which he wrote in two weeks. He characterized it as being deeply personal but also “a picture book.” “It’s good for a coffee table,” he told me. Of the book’s three hundred pages, only eight are photo-free. There are photos of Juanes as a child, basking in the sunlight or playing his too-big guitar, which he practiced obsessively while trying to distract himself from the kidnapping and drug violence in Medellín. There are many, many photos of Juanes in concert, or en route to a concert. The best photos are those of Ehkymosis, in which a teen-age Juanes, hair to his shoulders, appears chubby and stern—the Joey Fatone of the group. He went solo in 1997, after twelve years with his band. He writes, always briefly, of the biggest challenges of his life and career—separating and then reuniting with his wife, parting ways with his first manager, seeing a U.F.O and being made fun of about it. There are telenovela-inspired chapter titles: “Shock,” “Glory,” “Crossroads,” “New Day.”

Juanes will be releasing a new album later this year and will return to New York in June, to perform at Radio City Musical Hall. “Chasing the Sun” is, in some ways, a means of testing his appeal among English-speakers—he’ll be releasing a shorter, English-version of his new album. “It’s an experiment,” he said to the crowd at Barnes & Noble, to great applause.

Photograph, of Juanes in London, in 2012, by Andy Sheppard/Redferns/Getty.

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